Manhattan Short Film Festival grows

Manhattan Short offers new filmmakers the chance to find an audience and the festival has grown with venues this year in more than 300 cities including three venues on the Cape and Islands.

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By LAURIE HIGGINS

capecodtimes.com

By LAURIE HIGGINS

Posted Oct. 4, 2012 at 1:40 PM
Updated Oct 5, 2012 at 11:09 AM

By LAURIE HIGGINS

Posted Oct. 4, 2012 at 1:40 PM
Updated Oct 5, 2012 at 11:09 AM

The films

"The Devil's Ballroom" (Norway), directed by Henrick M. Dahlsbrakken: On a perilous journey to the North Pole, an Artic explorer makes a critical decision with lifelong consequences.

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The films

"The Devil's Ballroom" (Norway), directed by Henrick M. Dahlsbrakken: On a perilous journey to the North Pole, an Artic explorer makes a critical decision with lifelong consequences.

"A Curious Conjunction of Coincidences" (Netherlands), directed by Joost Reijmers: Bad luck connects three men, even though they live in different centuries.

"Where the Sea Flows" (Russia), directed by Vitaly Saltykov: A mother comes to grips with a precocious young daughter and the violent circumstances of her birth.

"Two & Two" (United Kingdom), directed by Babak Anvari: In a school run by an authoritarian regime, a seemingly ridiculous decree becomes a syllabus for terror.

"Cluck" (Ireland), directed by Michael Lavelle: Feathers are ruffled at an orphanage when a new arrival threatens to upset the pecking order.

"Behind the Mirrors" (Peru), directed by Julio O. Ramos: When a customer at a disreputable hotel leaves an unexpected mess, the young manager sees an opportunity that changes his family's fortunes forever.

"The Elaborate End of Robert Ebb" (France), directed by Clement Bolla, FX Goby and Matthiew Landour: A monster terrorizes a 1950s-era town and induces collective hysteria with hilarious results.

"Superman, Spiderman, or Batman" (Romania), directed by Tydor Giurgiu: Inspired by his favorite comic book characters, a young boy tries to save the day.

"92 Skybox Alonzo Mourning Rookie Card" (U.S.), directed by Todd Sklar: Two brothers sort out their differences in an extreme fashion after their father dies.

"Voice Over" (Spain), directed by Martin Rosete: A series of life-threatening experiences pale in comparison to a situation that requires real courage.

Nicholas Mason, an Australian-born and -trained actor who lives in New York City, started the Manhattan Short Film Festival 15 years ago when he projected 16 short films on the side of a truck on Little Italy's Mulberry Street for an audience of about 300.

From those humble beginnings came what has to be one of the most democratic film festivals in the world.

How it works now: The same 10 short films are shown to audiences all around the world sometime during the same week every fall. At the end of the screenings, audience members vote for their favorite and a winner is announced.

"A journalist in Colorado called it 'the world's most people-powered film festival' and that's exactly right," Mason says, admitting that the film he chooses as his personal favorite every year is rarely the audience favorite. Audiences, he says, tend to like films about dogs, kids and true stories.

Manhattan Short offers new filmmakers the chance to find an audience and the festival has grown tremendously over the years. This year, venues in more than 300 cities on six continents will take part, including three venues on the Cape and Islands. The movies were shown at the Martha's Vineyard Film Center in Tisbury last weekend and will be shown at Wellfleet Preservation Hall Friday through Sunday and the Nantucket Atheneum on Friday.

Janet Lesniak, managing director of Wellfleet Preservation Hall, says the film festival was a huge hit last year when they participated for the first time.

"People loved it," she says. "Last year, I went the first night, and I was in a restaurant the next night and I overheard people in the restaurant talking about the films. So it spurred a tremendous amount of conversation."

This year, Mason received 520 entries for the festival from 49 countries. He views each of them himself as a first screening. His whittling-down process involves choosing films from 10 different countries with 10 different styles and 10 different formats. Once he has narrowed the list down to 20 possibilities, he begins to show the films to other people to get their reaction before selecting the finalists.

Since the world has changed so dramatically over the history of the film festival, Mason says, so have the films he sees. For example, in the year 2000, most of the films he got were big rich productions shot with 35 mm film with lavish sets and costumes. In the years right after 9/11, different styles and stories emerged, like a film titled, "Routine," by an Israeli filmmaker about a mother and father waiting for their daughter to come home after a suicide bomb in Tel Aviv and not knowing if she was dead or alive.

"You'd end up getting these stories that were colored by situations happening around the world," Mason says. "They're very good at creating what's happening in the world and how it's affecting personal relationships. I find that fascinating. It's like a little trip around the world."

The other thing that has changed over time is technology. One of the films this year, "92 Skybox Alonzo Mourning Rookie Card," directed by Todd Sklar and filmed in Missouri, was made using a 5D and 7D digital camera. The film's entire budget was less than $1,000 and most of that went for food and beer for the cast and crew.

"I used to get films only from London or New York or LA, where the 35 mil camera companies were that could lend their equipment for three days to make a short film," Mason says. "Now I'm getting stories from filmmakers who make stories about their own backyard and they're shooting in their backyard and there is nothing to stop them from making a film anymore. Because of that Manhattan Short is only going to get better."

The 10 films chosen tend to be those from up-and-coming filmmakers and many have gone on to greater glory with feature-length films. This year's group holds the same promise. Sklar's film already won a Sundance Film Festival award earlier this year and a feature-length version is in the editing stage. He will also submit that to Sundance. Spanish director Martin Rosete's short film "Voice Over" has led to signing with the William Morris Agency and offers to direct his first feature film.